The Dispatch Podcast - Why GOP Candidates Are Ignoring Trump

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Mike Warren is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Megan McArdle, and Kevin Williamson to discuss why GOP midterm candidates aren’t heeding President Donald Trump’s electoral advice, as well as Texas Railroad Commission candidate Bo French’s racist tweet about a University of Texas football game. The Agenda: —GOP candidates ignoring Trump —Making the election about Trump —Bo French’s anti-Indian racism —"Just talk about Abdul El-Sayed" —NWYT: Demolishing the Kennedy Center Show notes: —Jonah Goldberg: Where Have the Grown-Ups Gone?  The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren. On today's roundtable, we'll be returning to the upcoming midterm elections and discuss why Republican candidates appear to be ignoring President Trump's advice on how to run their campaigns. They're not making the election about him and they're certainly not promoting his $5,000 dividend. Then we briefly look at the race in Michigan and ask why Vice President Vance is telling House Republicans to, quote, just talk about Abdul al-Said.

unquote. And finally, not worth your time, demolishing the Kennedy Center. I'm joined today by Dispatch Editor-in-Chief, Joda Goldberg, National Correspondent Kevin Williamson, and Dispatch Contributor, Megan McArdle. Let's dive in. All right, we are recording on Thursday, September 17th, which means there are 47 days left until Election Day. And there are a number of indications coming in here in these final weeks that the election might be very, very bad for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But I want to start actually with a Washington Post article that caught my attention and just deep dive into this a little bit.

Last week in Dallas, I was there covering the not a convention convention in Dallas. We heard from Donald Trump, you know, this election is going to be about me. He talked about the $5,000 payout to every American. American adult, if Republicans hold Congress in the midterm elections. It's very clear that the president wants Republicans to make this midterm election about him, which, you know, you can hear Democrats saying, we know we want to do that too. And what I found interesting was this Washington Post article, GOP candidates are largely ignoring Trump's midterm advice.

Essentially, nobody is talking about Trump. But if you are a Republican candidate for House or Senate, the Post has done this analysis, this has found that the number of references to Trump has dropped among Republicans. But interestingly, also Democrats, which I think could be a whole other conversation. But not only are Republicans not talking about the president and the leader of their party, they are basically trying to avoid talking about the messages. He wants to talk about Save America Act.

Now this new $5,000 check proposal. And it just got me thinking that it does seem that Republicans are perhaps simply engaging in a very old kind of political move here, which is you have an unpopular president. You're the incumbent party. The way to go about this is to run away from that unpopular president. It is almost an iron law of politics that you run away from the unpopular incumbent leader of your party. So is that what's going on? Or are we seeing something a little deeper? Are Republican candidates, Republican members of Congress and others in the party starting to look at Trump in the rearview mirror?

He's just about to be a lame duck president. And the party is trying to move on in fits and starts. Are we at long last seeing that? Jonah, let me start with you. What's your take on why Republicans aren't taking up Trump's message here and running with it? What's going on? Well, first of when you ask, is the party moving on? I get what you mean when you say the party.

You mean the members of the party who are running for office. Correct. But there's also like the actual organization of the Republican Party. And it is not moving on. That's fair. It is simply an extension of Donald Trump's personal household and estate as it were. But yeah, I think the problem with that, I mean, there were many problems with that fake convention. And I'm going to insist on calling it a fake convention because it had, it did no party business.

soever. But the message that came out of it was just the $5,000 a gimmick thing. And the Republicans don't want to talk about that, right? So like that whole thing was set up for them to have some messaging coming out of the convention and Trump stepped on his own messaging, as it were. And I actually think it's more interesting that the Democrats aren't talking as much about Trump, but maybe they feel like they just, they don't have to. I will say, I'm willing to, defend the $5,000 thing a little bit in so far. I mean, it's horrible policy. Don't get me wrong. But the only people inclined to believe that that's possible that this will happen are precisely the voters. Trump needs to turn out. Very low information, very low propensity, only like Trump,

don't care about politics, don't know how Washington works. And if enough of them believe it, it might actually help in some races. The people who shouldn't be allowed to vote in short. That's sort of what I'm saying, yes. But beyond that, I think the thing that I find hard to get my head around, and I try to talk to Chris Starwalt about this on The Remnant, is all the numbers look terrible for the Republicans, right? I mean, it's just like Republicans are underwater on immigration and the economy, right?

And the generic ballot, I think, is up to plus nine for Democrats. And then you actually look at all of the handicappers, what their prediction of seats lost. And it's still, it would be below the historic average for a midterm thing. And I understand the structural reasons why. You know, it's like the gerrymandering and the big sort and all that kind of stuff. But there is just sort of a flaw in how we're talking about all of this, as everyone's talking about how it's going to be this massive wave.

And they're also talking about how the results aren't going to be that atypical from actually a pretty good year for a presidential midterm. And so I kind of feel like the, the shock is going to be coming from the Senate. All of a sudden, Kansas is looking like it might be in play, that kind of thing. And we're used to thinking that the Senate is a 50-50 shot for Democrats. I'm kind of feeling like it's better than that right now, but I don't know. Yeah, let's talk quickly about Senate because we've sort of been circling around this.

Joe and I know you have talked about conversations you've had where even just in the weeks prior to this, where it seems like the idea that the Democrats will win the House. is sort of solidifying as almost conventional wisdom. But the Senate seemed at some point, maybe this summer, more likely to switch to the Democrats than the House was. And it's exactly for races like that in Kansas. You have some news, Bill Graves, who's a former governor of Kansas. He is a Republican, but he is endorsing Democrat Adam Hamilton, who is challenging Roger

Marshall in that Kansas seat. I mean, that map is expanding. And it's interesting to me how little kind of synchronicity there is between the president and the leaders in Congress, both in the House and the Senate. Let's go back quickly, actually, to this $5,000 check idea. Because, I mean, I think you're right, Jonah, that it could be sort of, you know, as Daniel Patrick Moyni and you say, sort of boo bait for the Bubba's like a way to just get those low information voters to say, he's going to get me this, so I might as well vote. But you would think that somebody like Mike Johnson or John Thune, who are tracking exactly what's going on in all of the races that they need to win,

would be at least interested on board if this were some way to sort of get voters out for the candidates in the races that they need to win. And instead, Mike Johnson said when he was asked about this proposal after the convention, we need more time to process it. you know, we're still trying to figure out if this makes any sense. John Thune didn't know anything about it. There seems to be just a real disconnect. Does Donald Trump, Megan, I'll ask you this.

Does Donald Trump even really care about the direction of, or rather the control of the House and the Senate in this kind of lame duck period? It doesn't really seem to be using Congress much these days. Does it end up mattering to him at all who's in control of Congress after these midterm elections? Or is he just sort of pursuing these things, you know, irrespective of what Mike Johnson might be saying, hey, we could really use this kind of message to win in these important races. What's your read on that?

I think it matters to him as kind of a matter of ego. And I don't think he really wants to spend the next two years tied up in investigations, which he is definitely going to if Democrats take the House. But in terms of, yeah, you're right. He doesn't want to get anything done. I guess maybe he'll worry that they won't let him build the ballroom or knock down the Kennedy Center. but other than that, he is not trying to get anything done.

And when he does try to get things done, he doesn't try to do them in the way that things are done, should be done, have to be done if you want to build any kind of durable legacy, which is to get legislation. And so I think he doesn't care in the normal sense that presidents care, where, like, for one thing, they like the other members of their party and care about them because they've been in the party for a long time,

and it's important to them. He doesn't care in that way. And he doesn't care in the way where he wants to get people to help legislate. What he cares about is if it is seen as a reflection on him and if it wounds his vulnerable psyche. And I don't think that that overrides, right? But the flip side of that is, is he willing to sacrifice all of the stuff that he's going out and saying

and his ability to just randomly loudmouthed about anything he feels like in order to protect the house? No, obviously. I mean, we can see he does not. Revealed preference. Well, let me push back on that a little bit because we do have this news that we know that Republicans, and particularly Donald Trump's political operation, has a lot of money, right? So whatever Donald Trump says or how he acts or whatever lack of coordination there is,

at the very least, $138 million and more is going to be coming from Donald Trump's sort of political outfits to help candidates and campaigns across the country. I mean, money talks, right? Does that reflect an interest from the president? president? They will provide money because they have it. But the real question is, does it impinge on anything like his ability to run his mouth or his ability to launch ill-advised wars in Iran or impose tariffs that are going to piss everyone off? Absolutely not. Like, my hot take is, no, he's not going to let it restrain. He's not going to make any effort that would require him to

restrain himself or behave strategically in order to help Congress. I'm not even sure he's going to spend the money on him, to be honest. I mean, he's going to spend that money, but he may spend it on as to say, Donald Trump is Austin, not as to say, vote for Kent Paxton. Yeah, fair enough. That's a good point. Well, okay, if maybe Donald Trump doesn't have that great of an interest in Republicans running in these midterm elections, it does seem that.

Some of those candidates are also moving away from Trump or trying to put distance. And I'm focused on Iowa. I spent a little time in Iowa in the spring covering the Democratic Senate primary there. There's a very interesting governor's race in Iowa as well. But Iowa is this interesting state because it was a quintessential swing state for decades. And always had, you know, a Democratic senator and a Republican senator. And it did flip in the presidential elections. And it had a somewhat even split in its House delegation as well. In the Trump era, it has really become pretty deep red. It's really not even contested much anymore at the presidential level. And yet, it seems to me that Republicans have a real problem in Iowa. It speaks to not just

the tariffs and the effect on agriculture there, but also the Iran War. Some of the earliest casualties in the Iran War were people who were connected with Iowa. And now we saw this week there was a Democratic resolution in the House. It's not binding or anything like that, but it was a Democratic-led resolution condemning the president's misuse of war powers in Iran. And I found a very interesting that two Republican members of the House, there's four members of the House from Iowa, all of them are Republicans right now, and two of them, the most vulnerable Marionette Miller Meeks and Zach Nunn, voted with the Democrats on this. I think that's interesting. I think Ashley Hinson, another one of those congresswomen from Iowa, who is running for Senate and a competitive race, will not be joining

vice president J.D. Vance when J.D. Vance is in Iowa campaigning on Friday. He's going to be campaigning in Council Bluffs. It's a Republican area. It's actually where Ashley Henson's Democratic rival is from. You would think that she might want to go to the place where her rival or her Democratic challenger is from and campaigned with the vice president from her own party. She's got a busy schedule. I'm focusing on Iowa because I've seen these trends, but it does seem like between the Iran War and the tariffs. And some of these heartland places that were for Trump, Kevin, there's a desire to put some distance between a Republican candidate to put distance between

him or her and the Trump administration. Are you surprised? No. Well, first of all, I'm glad we're pumping up this Washington Post content because, you know, it's a McArdle subsidy, which is, I'm always in favor of McCarthy. Which there should be many more of in the world. I was surprised by their chart, though. So I wasn't surprised that Democrats were twice as likely to mention Trump in social media posts as Republicans.

I was surprised it was only 20% of the posts. If I were the Democrats, I would have Trump's name in like 114% of my content. So I was just recently, before yesterday I went to dispatch Honto event in Atlanta, and I drove there. And when I left at 4.30 in the morning, opened my first Red Bull, diesel, was 589 at the pub. And I drove down the highway just watching them change the signs as it was going up. And by the time I get to the Atlanta suburbs, I'm seeing diesel for like 629, 635, stuff like that. And Trump voters, hardcore Trump voters are guys who like to drive Ford Super Duty pickup trucks with 48-gallon tanks.

And if diesel gets above $7, it's going to cost $350 to fill that up. They're not going to go out and vote for Republicans. they're not going to be able to afford to drive to the polls, even if they wanted to. They're going to be stuck at home, not able to get anywhere. I think there are actually two things going on. You've got people who are delusional and full of hope and think they may still be elected, and they're trying to get away from Trump because they think that's their best way to get elected. Then you've got the Mike Johnson's and thunes and stuff who know that the Republicans

are going to get the crap kicked out of them, and they're stepping away from Trump a little bit because they're thinking about their careers after that. And, you know, how do we position ourselves for what comes next? I know if you're Johnson, you've already made peace with the fact that you're not going to be House Speaker anymore. You're going to be in the minority and you're probably going to be kicked out as leader pretty quickly after that. He's thinking about whatever Cargill board he's going to be on or whatever, you know, comes next in his life. And who knows what Dune is thinking. But, you know, I'm kind of with Noah Rothman over at National Review a little bit, which is that I can look at the poll and read a poll as well as anybody else.

Well, maybe not as well as anybody else, but well enough. And see who's ahead and who's not ahead. That said, there's just part of me that doesn't believe the Democrats are going to win in Texas. And there's part of me that really doubts that they're going to win in Iowa. But there's nothing particularly to base that on other than, you know, hunches and experience and superstition and vibes and all that stuff. the data to the extent that we have it, you know, points at a very different direction, although we have seen Republicans in earlier cycles overperform expectations from the polls.

That happens from time to time for various kinds of reasons. So I guess the question I would ask is if you're a Republican running for a House seat in Iowa or you're running for a Senate seat in Texas, even in Texas, why would you be talking about Trump? Like, where's the juice in it? The people who are going to vote for you because you're close to Trump are already going to vote for you. Those people are baked into the math. the ones you're going to show up to the polls anyway. The ones who don't have diesel trucks,

the ones who live within walking distance or scooter distance of a polling site are going to be there. If there are any persuadable voters, the last thing you're going to persuade them with right now is, hey, I'm good buddies with Donald Trump, and I'm going to give you more of this, more of this stuff that you're loving so much.

It seems politically pretty self-evident what the natural thing to do in that situation would be. But I will just reiterate that I'm surprised that Democrats, rather, or not, just hopping up and down on this even more than they are. It's also, you know, I am of the mindset that I follow the midterm stuff almost entirely out of professional obligation rather than actual interest. And because I have to do so much sort of CNN punditry, it's kind of like these are my markers in my memory about

like, what do we know about stuff? It's like when I have to prep for dispatch podcast. And I feel like there was a lot of talk about how Trump was going to have this rally. did Trump strategy where he was going to go around doing events, barnstorming the country. And it turns out he's just, he's just, he's not doing that. You know, I mean, he's done a couple speeches. He'll do a couple more and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I was listening to Maggie Haberman recently make this case that, like, Trump basically just doesn't consider the future of the Republican Party part of his legacy.

He considers putting up buildings with his name on them part of his legacy. and he considers getting richer part of his legacy. And it just seems to me that, like, that's the message. Like, don't talk about democracy. Like, I care about democracy. Don't talk about the Constitution. I care about the Constitution. Talk about Howard Lutnik, literally doubling his net worth in, what, 18 months,

something like that? He's now worth $7 billion. It's from 3.5 since he's been Commerce Secretary. Like, there are enough things where Trump says the quiet part out loud. I would just run those ads. And the dilemma that this strategy has of turning out the base voters, the hell yeah, I'm going to get $5,000 voters, is just one of, does it also activate more voters on the other side that counteract it? And I just don't think you can ask that question on a national level. You have to go state by state and district by district and ask.

So like this lean into Trump and Trumpism strategy probably makes sense for Texas, probably doesn't make sense for Michigan, right? And it doesn't make sense for Maine. And, you know, it's basically if Trump won a state by 10 to 14 points and you know that those voters out there exist for Trump, that maybe this kind of strategy makes sense. If you depend on independence and swing voters and those kinds of people, you're screwed.

I mean, I just don't know how do you, like, I don't know how you can talk it any other way, then you're just, you're just screwed. And that's why, you know, Star Wars is the first person to say it, but I think what's his name, Mike Lawler from New York, he showed up at the midterm convention thing,

fake midterm convention thing, to audition to be. you know, assistant secretary of EPA or something like that. And it has nothing to do with actually, there aren't enough Republican votes in his district and independent votes in his district. The numbers for Trump on Hispanics and young people, I mean, there are tumors that pull better.

Yeah. It's just unbelievable. Which tumors would that be, Jonah? The best tumors, Megan. Answer the question. Answer the question. I figured out, by the way, how Trump's going to pull off his $5,000 to every adult thing.

Because if there's one thing we know about Donald Trump is that he's a Jonah Goldberg reader, a religious Jonah Goldberg reader. And Jonah recently had a column arguing that there are no adults. So Trump's going to say, hey, I was going to do it. But, you know, Jonah says there are no adults. No one to write a check to you. I guess I have to keep the money. There you go. Yeah, exactly. Well, to your point, Jota, about Hispanic voters, there's a new ad actually out just this morning from a congresswoman in South Florida, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, a. Republican from South Florida, which, I mean, we were talking about, you know, a Republican putting distance between themselves and Donald Trump. This is, there's no question. That's what she's doing. Literally, she says in the ad, Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. It's directed to the president, to Donald Trump. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. I mean, that is, it's about as strong as you can get. And the polling suggests as much. I'm a little less familiar with the polling in South Florida,

but I know in South Texas that the gains that Republicans had been making and certainly that Trump had been making in South Texas, particularly in those areas along the border, have all but evaporated. And there has been polling that shows that those, there's three districts that run along the kind of Rio Grande Valley and then upward sort of northwestern part of that stretch of border. and they all seem to be pretty solidly in the direction of the Democratic Party,

despite the fact that Donald Trump won all three of those districts in the 2024 election. But it's interesting to me, so it's sort of a Hispanic voter part of Donald Trump's coalition. It's the diesel truck driver part of the coalition, and it's those independent swing voters for whom it's, right? This message about immigration enforcement, Megan, also is appealing to those voters, right? Like those kind of actions, which now seem like in the rearview mirror a bit, were not popular with swing voters and maybe a first part of where Donald Trump's popularity went down the tubes.

Is there any part of Trump's coalition besides the diehard bagas that's hanging on here in this midterm election? I don't see it. Look, I think that political coalitions always have the problem is that as they get bigger, they also get more fragile, right? You have conflicts within the coalition. and as the coalition is growing, they're more manageable.

But the bigger they get, the more conflicts you have, and the harder it is to hold on to your marginal members. Trump's coalition was not that big to start with. And a lot of his core constituencies are absolutely adamant about stuff that is going to alienate another part of the coalition, right? And I think another thing that we could think about is there are two coalitions.

There's a general election coalition, and there's a primary coalition. And the primary coalition consists of people who have extremely strong views on things like immigration, on things like tariffs. And then you have a larger coalition that's just like,

I would like the economy to be nice and woke is too much and stop it. And you take those two groups and you give group A what you want because that's the hurdle. You have to clear the primary hurdle to get to the general. And then you gave them

what they were, wanted and then everyone else is mad and you just start losing people. And that is exacerbated by his staffing choices and his lack of ethics and his vulgarity, which has made it hard for him to get good people to surround him. And so he is surrounded by staffers who are maximalist, who do not care about winning elections. They want to do these very extreme things, right? Like, you could have done mass deportations without the ice theatrics and people dying and you would have deported a lot of people. It's not my personal, I'm not saying I would favor this, but like if that is what you want, you could have done it with like,

just don't do the stuff where you're pushing old ladies to the ground. Just don't do the stuff where you are so aggressive that multiple people are getting shot. Multiple American citizens are getting shot in demonstrations. But they want the confrontation. They want the theatrics. That's what they enjoy. And that's what that meant. MAGA base, the primary base enjoys. And so they do that. And everyone else is like, oh, oh, my God, stop. And this has been the dynamic for his whole presidency, but much more so in this administration. Because the semi-sane people, or you're, I don't think we have a lot of Trump-loving listeners, but like the Trump lovers will get mad for me saying semi-sane. So if you say just the people who

were more establishment understood how things worked, And kind of more in tune with the general sentiment of the American public, which did want to shut down immigration, but did not want to push old ladies to the ground. Those people are gone, long gone. And the people who are going to replace whoever leaves after the midterms are going to be even more in that direction, which is going to set up a very interesting dynamic with the Democratic Congress. And there's also, like, a lot of people aren't paying attention to the railroad commissioner race in Texas. Yeah. But this Beau-French thing where, you know, for listeners who don't know, he's a bad dude, Beau-French. Just he's a bad dude for a bunch of different reasons.

But he tweets out this picture of some Indian-American kids in like cowboy hats and football gear, swag, celebrating a UT victory in the stands. And he starts this whole Twitter storm about social media storm. about how we got to get rid of these people. They're stealing our jobs. They're stealing our culture. They're stealing America. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Attracts all of this negative attention. It got so bad that Carl Rove wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal today or yesterday, saying that for the first time in his life he's going to vote for a Democrat because this guy just can't be anywhere near that office. Railway commissioner is actually a kind of an important job in Texas, as Kevin will tell you, because it does the oil and gas industry stuff. And the thing is, this can't be good for Paxton. Because if you are one of these sort of always Republican but not always Trump, suburban voters in Texas,

who already really don't like Paxton, and you just factor it into this larger background noise about the kind of brand of party you're being asked to be part of when the Republicans are already really losing the suburbs already, it's just toxic. And I think there are those kinds of things as like, you know, Eric Erickson has this very interesting, causing a stir piece, just following the money essentially and the connections on all of these bigoted, fascist, authoritarian, gross, groper. You know, there are a lot of different adjectives you could use for different segments of it, constellation of people, and people are freaking out at Eric Erickson about it. But there's still a lot of Republicans left over who just don't. want to be part of a racist party. It just makes them crazy uncomfortable, maybe even not for like the most high-minded reasons. They just don't, they just don't like the drama of it. And as the

Trump coalition fractures and they start throwing behind Vance and jockeying for a post-Trump universe, they're saying stuff that it's just really, really bad for attracting normy Republicans and normy right-leaning independence. And I think you can sort of see a catalytic thing happening. You know, as Jonah says, the railroad commission in Texas is the job of some responsibility. And when you have a responsible sensitive position like that, what you really are looking for is a guy named Bo. People named Bo are always, are always really down for it. Jonah's right also about the crowding out effect, I think, and what's left over is, you know, so many tinfoil hats, it looks like a bag of Hershey's kisses, except it's not chocolate inside.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more, from the Dispatch podcast. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaiaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out.

Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. We're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. So to sort of stay on Beau French and those comments just for a minute because I wrote about Beau French this week because I saw French last week at an event near the convention in Dallas before this tweet about the crowd of the Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin. And I sort of furiously

wrote down a bunch of the things that he said at this panel. It was about immigration and kind of the future of immigration politics on the right in a symposium that involves a lot of those kind of new right, post-liberal folks that Eric Erickson has written about. And I still don't know what I quite think of it, but to your point, Jonah, about the kind of party that a lot of normie Republicans want to be in or think of themselves as being a part of, or even just the kind of focus of rhetoric of a party. it struck me that Beau French was talking about immigration and what the problem was. His focus is interestingly not so much on immigration from Mexico or over the southern border,

but legal immigration from South Asia and other parts of that part of the world into Texas, which there has been a significant sort of influx over the past couple of decades of South Asian immigrants, mostly India and Pakistan into the suburbs of Texas. And he used a phrase, which I thought was interesting, and I thought, I don't know if that sells in Texas or in kind of the modern Republican Party, which was he said, this whole growth at all costs mentality has really diluted our culture,

something about diluting the culture or diluting America. Growth at all costs. And Kevin, I just heard that while sitting in Texas and thought, this guy wants to be a statewide official in Texas, This growth at all cost seems like it's the unofficial motto of the state of Texas. But so more to the point, you know, there is a tension here between the kind of anti-immigrant viewpoints, not just illegal immigration. I'm talking about legal immigration, anti-immigrant, you know, they're destroying our culture kind of viewpoints that these kind of extremists, which is gaining some traction in some of these more mainstream areas of the party, that's a real tension with economic growth. and the sort of sunbelt mentality that has given Republicans majorities over the last couple of decades.

I don't know. Is there a limit here to anti-immigrant sentiment in the Republican Party? Well, apparently not. So I kind of think this guy, you know, thinks, well, I'm running for office in Texas, so I'm supposed to be a cowboy and we don't like Indians and maybe he doesn't understand, like, the whole, you know, the thing. But he's a little confused by the language maybe or something because he doesn't seem super bright. Well, on that point, just really quickly, not always he confused about the Indians. He's confused about the immigrant thing, too, because he's also said he wants to deport Native American Indians. Yes. Which, back to Mongolia, you know, where they came from 7,000 years ago.

I believe technically Siberia. Siberia, okay. The Bering Landstreet, yeah. Well, that's underwater now. Yeah. We probably should report them there. So I say this is someone who actually once was an illegal immigrant. immigrant in India stealing their jobs. So maybe I'm a many other times on that point of view. But I remember my

my old boss of the Indian Express, the guy named Shaker Gupta, during our financial crisis, wrote a very, very funny column about how we should solve our financial crisis by just radically increasing the number of immigrants from India that we get. It's like, look, we'll come, we'll buy your crappy houses, we'll fix them up real nice, we'll have good, quiet neighborhoods, we're not going to steal your jobs, we're going to start our own businesses, we might hire some of you, you know, because we think of you as a pretty reliable workforce of people who speak pretty good English, and we can, you know, we feel like we can probably work with you. Of all the people in the world to be mad at, Indian immigrants just seems like maybe hold that one off, you know,

maybe that's not the group to worry about too much. People who either, you know, come here with nothing and then a generation or two in own 50 hotels and 60 convenience stores, or people who show up with nothing but the shirts on their backs in three medical degrees and come work as physicians and such. So they seem like a pretty good advertisement for the immigrant experience. There is this real sense, though, I think among kind of aggrieved, perceived downwardly mobile young white men that they're being made to compete with people from around the world that they didn't have to compete with before. And that's an aspect of globalization, both in terms of the integration of supply chains and markets and also in terms of immigration. And they are

100% right. They do have to compete with people they didn't used to have to compete with. And you know what? It's good. They need some competition. They need to get off their asses and get some jobs and work a little bit harder and work a little bit smarter and not sit around playing video games all day and smoking weed and whatever else they do and having more revolving gambling debt than library loans. My lifestyle is valid, Kevin. Stop criticizing it. So if you're an American man of college age, you are more likely to have revolving gambling debt

than to have read a book. So yeah, bring in the immigrants. That's depressing. Yeah, bring them, bring them, bring them, bring them around. You can really see this in the way that conservatives have reacted to affirmative action. Yeah. Not all of them, to be clear.

Like a lot of people just really did think that the old system was unfair and they wanted it to be fair. But, like, anyone who was actually following the issue knew that basically the share of white entrance was not going to change that much, because what had been happening at elite universities especially was that they were suppressing Asian applications in order to admit more blacks and Hispanics, and they were keeping the white share roughly, like, proportional to some combination of the applicant pool, the population.

and that what was going to happen if you ended up affirmative action was there'd be way more Asians and slightly fewer or about the same number of whites. And like the number of people who are now like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I wasn't doing this for some Asian person. I was doing this for the good old white race. And like that dynamic is incredibly toxic. Thankfully, I don't think it's that common.

Right? I think the loud mouths online are not representing where most the American public is on this. Like, it is just another reminder of how toxic a lot of this stuff was, even on issues where I agree with them, and I do, in fact, agree that the affirmative action system as it was being practiced,

where you're downranking Asians as having crappy personalities in order to keep the out of your school is ferociously un-American. You know, I've had a lot of these conversations about affirmative action over the years, and like you, I'm generally against racial preferences, but I also think we should probably be realistic about it. And you talk to these people,

and yeah, maybe Barack Obama got a little leg up when he was applying to Harvard Law School. And you, Bubba, you were right on the cusp, huh? You're like, you were that close to being in Harvard Law School. And you got cheated out of it because Barack Obama came along and he got an extra couple of, you know, points on his, on his application. That is not how the world actually has been working. Well, I want to get back real quick to the midterm election and strategy conversation a bit here because... Really? Good luck. But I do want because we've been talking a lot about Republicans and how Republicans don't have a message, right?

They're all over the place. They're talking about how we've got to stop Indian Americans from being in the stands at UT games. They're talking about anything other than Donald Trump. And I will say that there is an interesting wrinkle in the way that the way that One particular Republican is talking about how Republican candidates should move forward in these midterm elections. And that's J.D. Vance, the vice president, who met with House Republicans earlier this week. And he had a different strategy than Donald Trump's. Just talk about me and how great I am strategy.

He said, just talk about Abdul El-Sayyad, right? The Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. And to attach him, this particular candidate, to Randolph, them, you know, House Republicans' opponent. If your opponent isn't crazy, just try to liken them to Abdul-Said. On the one hand, you know, if you're running for re-election in California or Florida or North Carolina, I don't quite see what the Senate candidate in Michigan or, for that matter, the mayor of New York or a congresswoman from New York and AOC, has to do with those elections.

But Republicans did a pretty good job of using Nancy Pelosi as kind of a boogeyman, sort of attaching their opponents to Nancy Pelosi. Is this a good strategy? Is it the only strategy for Republicans at this point? Jonah, what do you think? Should Republicans, at least strategically speaking, attach their opponents to Abdul al-Sayyad? Well, I mean, I think it's important to remember

they got to do something, right? Like they get a lot of money, they got campaign managers, they got consultants. They have to have some strategy of some. kind, right? And that's like the best defense for the midterm thing. It's that better than nothing, right? And similarly, the Abdul-Said thing, look, I think Abdul-Said was a terrible candidate for the Democrats to pick. I think he's an albatross. I think there were, we've talked about it a million times here. There were unique circumstances where it made him competitive in a primary in Michigan

that would not be true in almost any other state, I think any other state. And we know that voters are nationalizing midterm elections a lot more than they used to. The good news for Democrats is Trump is a bigger nationalizer of the election than Abdul-Said ever could be. So, like, will that argument overpower the argument that we need to give Trump another rubber stamp for two more years? Probably not. At the margins, it will help some people more than it hurts, right? And the fact that Syed in particular, I think, partly I have to just say out of a weird kind of arrogance, yeah, cannot bring himself to be the sort of tough-minded realist and just throw Hassan Piker under a bus. Instead, he comes up with these very convoluted, you know, shame on you, reporter for asking me for

the eighth time to talk about this California streamer, who I will not name, nor will I denounce, as he's going around like, I think this morning he's got an interview with Axios talking about how America is pound for pound worse than Al Qaeda. Like he's, he might as well just be begging Syed to say, denounce me. And Syed won't do it out of either pride or some messaging he's getting from the base, which I think is dumb. And that's useful for Republicans. If you're trying to nationalize the race and say the other side is crazy and the other side is radical and dangerous, it's better than nothing. And shame on the Democrats

for giving the Republicans that opportunity. I just don't think it swamps $8 diesel and, you know, Trump spending more time talking about how like, I mean, like literally this week he gave an interview where he said,

look, it boils down to put my name on the Kennedy Center or we tear it down. And I don't think a lot of Americans care about the Kennedy Center that much, but they care that the president cares so much that he's willing to do this over all the other things that they think he's broken promises on. So by all means, hang Sayette around people's necks. They're going to hang Tala Rica around people's necks. Trump's heavier to hang around Republican necks. And there's also, you know,

people like Paxton, who's the technical word for it is bad person. And like, that's helpful too. The immediate thing they jumped out to me on that is that, you know, turned about as fair play. And if that's JD's strategy, someone might ask J.D. Vance, husband of Usha, father of Vivek, what do you think about Bo down in Texas? And I think that would be a fair question. I was also thinking, by the way, when we were talking about that, if someone actually went to the University of Texas for five happy years, those Indian kids down there mostly aren't immigrants. Right. Like at this point, they're second, third generation people. They've got funny, Bear County, San Antonio accents, not Delhi and Bombay accents. Right. And they've assimilated, right? That's the whole point of that picture.

That's what bothers people about that, is that they're wearing cowboy hats and, you know, they look like there are American kids having fun. And that's what bothers Beau French. My theory on that picture is if it had been in black and white, I honestly don't think there would have been anything that Bo French could have made out of that picture. I think if you look at it in total, it just looks like the student section at the University of Texas, which, by the way, pulled off an incredible come from behind win over Ohio's. in that game. And it does make me wonder, too, does both French know how important football

and college football is to Texas voters? And that that is sort of being the wet blanket in that very kind of high energy period of the weekend after that big win. It just seemed to be out of touch. Megan, any thoughts on Democrats having Abdul Syed sort of hung around their neck? Is it, will it be effective? Will it help on the margins for Republicans? I mean, maybe a teeny tiny little bit, but mostly no. I mean, first of all, like, people have so much else to be mad about. And second of all, I just think this actually goes to a broader thing,

which is that Republicans, they loved running on the they them ads in 2024. They would love to keep replaying the greatest hits. You know, I mean, like, you get to a certain age. You don't want new music. You just want to put your old albums

on, listen to your Eagles' greatest hits. And I don't think it's working. Right, in 2024, the excesses of the Great Awakening were very much with people. They were an irritant. And they were something that people actually felt might affect their lives, their jobs, etc. Their kids in sports. But Democrats, well, you can argue they should have beaten a further retreat from the women's sports issue, for example,

on pediatric gaddener medicine in some cases. They've actually, like, they don't talk about it. They're not doing all the stuff that was irritating. people and one dude in Michigan is no more going to turn an election than like, you know, one dude in Missouri or Kansas or somewhere else was going to turn elections for Democrats. I do think that to the extent that El-Sayed represents a broader movement in the Democratic Party where they're getting the same phenomenon that Republicans have, where the primaries are so dominated by a group of hardliners who are really quite out of step with the rest of the country.

And not just on like we disagree about national health care or whatever, but who are really into progressive politics in a way that people really don't like. And obviously we have seen that. But so far only really, with the exception of Michigan, in blue states. Right? We've seen it in New York. but we have not seen it in like North Carolina, say. Yeah. And so I think that, like, if that happens, if this phenomenon gets broader, if people are in Congress from the blue states making trouble,

and if Democratic primary voters keep nominating people who are more and more radical, who push the party platform in a more radical direction, then things like Al-Saiad, will be good campaigning for Republican. But that's all in the future. That's not this cycle. This cycle is about Donald Trump.

They missed out an opportunity for a great ad, though. Like, if you vote for these people in 10 years, all the trans athletes in women's sports are going to be wearing hijabts. I mean, if I saw an AI-generated ad that looked like that, Kevin, this cycle, I would not be surprised. So you've put the idea out there in the universe. Before we take an ad break,

consider becoming a member of the dispatch. you'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join. And if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get one month free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders and more. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. All right, well, we have less than seven weeks to go until election day, so stay tuned and we'll continue following all of this. Right now, however, I want to spend a little bit at the end here on some not worth your time. We've already talked about it a little bit on this show. The Kennedy Center, Donald Trump, is out there saying, I want to tear it down. I believe an AFP photographer caught him.

The pool press caught him on Air Force One, holding some paper this week that said something about demolishing the Kennedy Center. And this is after a number of controversies and lawsuits have been going back and forth about whether or not the name of the Kennedy Center can be now the Trump and Kennedy and Trump Center. This is clearly something that the president is focused on. He wants to get rid of this building that he claims is falling apart and is a mess. and I have to admit it is a building that I drive by semi-regularly in my commute.

And as a building as a sort of architectural example, it's not my favorite building in Washington, D.C., but it does seem that the attempts to change the name or perhaps even to demolish it would be breaking the law because this was a monument established by Congress. But my question to the panel here is thinking about all of the buildings and monuments and other installation in our nation's great capital, which one would you, if you were president or if you were like the mayor, like in SimCity and had the ability to just click delete

and get rid of it or replace it with a new building, which one in Washington, D.C., would you like to get rid of because it's an eyesore or a reminder of something terrible? Jonah, I'm going to start with you. Which building in your fair city would you like to get rid of? So on ideological sort of, grounds the FBI headquarters, first of all, because it's just the Jay Edgar Hoover building,

is a very strong contender. But I think they're getting rid of that at some point. They're moving it to West Virginia. Yes. Right? So listeners may think this is gratuitous, but HUD, it's almost Bucharest 1973 in its architectural aesthetics. As a friend of mine says, it's nine floors of basement. And I've been inside. And like literally, it's a little bit like that scene in being John Malkovich, where, like, you can,

you're just walking around underneath the fluorescent lights. You feel it not only sapping out your vitamin D, but little tiny bites of your soul just walking around in there. And, I mean, maybe it's better since the last time I was in there. But it's so ugly. it's so bureaucratic. It is so straight out of Brazil, the movie, not the South American country.

That would be my choice. All right. Yeah, it is like the most brutalist of D.C.'s brutalist buildings. It might be the worst. Megan, your thoughts. I got to go with the ATF headquarters because it is near my house.

It is at the intersection of, it's basically at New York Avenue, where in Florida. and here is the thing about this building is first of all it was built post 9-11 it was built to be hardened against potential

car bombs and so it's got this weird giant like column-esque concrete it's really very difficult to describe in part because I'm very bad at visualizing things and even worse at like shape rotation

it takes up the whole corner it screws up the dynamics of what should be like a busy pedestrian intersection, it is not very attractive. And because it's close to me, it bothers me. So it's got to go. Sorry. It's also, it's like hugely traffic distorting is my vibe from it.

I don't know, like whenever I see it, I'm always in a traffic jam. So maybe I'm just associating it rather than... Yeah, I mean, I think partly that's... So the L'Enfant plan, which is the plan upon which D.C. was designed, done by Pierre L'Enfant. at the beginning of the Republic. It has this weird,

like there are these circles. You have a grid, but then there are these circles that spoke out roads that run diagonally across the city. And the problem with this is that as those roads vector towards the edges of the city,

they create all sorts of weird interactions. And one of those is that Florida Avenue, which used to be known as Boundary Street, before Florida, like back in the day. And I know this, because my house is just north of it, and because my house is just north of it, that means that I legally own my front yard, because while my house is technically not part of the original city, it is part of the county, it's part of the district of Columbia, but not the city of Washington.

That was changed. Obviously, they expanded to include more parts. But because of that, no one who is in the historical city of Washington owns their front yard, because it's like it belongs to the city. I am a proud front yard owner. But so that, intersection, the intersection of Florida, New York Avenue, the intersection of New York Avenue and North Capitol, it's just, it doesn't intersect at an angle that is conducive to moving modern traffic. And then, of course, these two roads become major arteries out of the city. And so my sense is that I can't blame the ATF building for that. They have improved it, though. They used to, when I moved in, there was known to everyone as Dave Thomas Circle.

there was a Wendy's in this little wedge between Florida Avenue and New York Avenue and the city spent like 20 years trying to prevent that intersection from being a total disaster. People would get killed. It always jammed up. The best jams were on Thanksgiving

during the Obama administration because Barack Obama liked to go the night before Thanksgiving and dole out food at a homeless shelter in Maryland. And this was very laudable. And so what he did was on the eve of before Thanksgiving. He took a motorcade to Maryland, blocking three of the biggest

arteries out of the District of Columbia on the night before Thanksgiving, including New York Avenue, which takes you to 495, the major ring highway that gets you into 95 and so forth. And so all of this would lock solid for like eight hours. And I would sit in my house listening to the horns. The number of people I know who missed flights, who missed trains, who missed trains, because it's very close to Union Station because you just could not move on these three arterial roads. Anyway, so Dave Thomas Circle

was an eyesore and they have finally fixed it. They tore down the eminent domain to the Wendy's. Normally I'm opposed, but in the case of my own personal self-interest and the benefit of Washington, D.C. For spite. You're in favor of the domain. I mean, also, like, it had a lot of drug deals going on. It was like not a great asset to the neighbor.

It wasn't great. Also, it was not a good Wendy's. My husband tried to go there one. It was not a good one. It was exceptionally disappointed in the Wendy's quality. And so now the traffic, I think, does move somewhat better and is not nearly as bad. So if you haven't been, I guess what I'm trying to say, Jonah, is if you haven't visited our traffic recently, come on over. Yeah. See the new and improved traffic flow.

I've been there recently. We can do a whole segment on spleen venting for DC residents about just motorcades in general. Yeah. Because motorcades, yes. They're monarchical garbage flexing that have, anyway, I'm sorry. But the Undersecretary of Agriculture half the time, you know. Well, yes. I'm going to get past the vice president's residence for 23 years to drive home from downtown D.C.

And mass have the cops come out 10 minutes before the motorcade comes out and close down traffic going both ways. So that even after the motorcade barrels through off of Rock Creek, it takes another 25 minutes to get traffic to flow again. And like, I'm just sitting there in my car, stabbing myself in the leg with a ballpoint pen with rage, trying to keep from getting arrested by the Secret Service. I'm going to turn into John Belushi from Saturday Night Live. And another thing about the Irish.

All right. Well, you know, Kevin, we are running up against the clock here. So I know you could name pretty much every building in D.C. And your answer to this question, but if you could limit your answer to John, just one or maybe two or three, but what's your building you would raise in D.C.? Well, I have for years been trying to raise money for a scholarship in memory of General Robert Ross, who is the British general who had the good sense to burn down Washington.

And I think as a scholarship for architectural students, that would be appropriate. I was recently in Washington, though. You know what I noticed? Like, there are only like three or four places in Washington you really want to go ever. And you know what's always in the way? The God-Degh, White House. it's always in the way if you're trying to walk somewhere. Like, you've got to walk a mile out of your way to get around the White House.

And you know what? Let's move that to West Virginia. There's a lot of real estate in West Virginia. It's beautiful out there. The climate's a lot nicer than it is in D.C. You can get them up in the mountains some, you know, be a little cooler. It could be like the Shimla of the American Capitol. And I think that that's my plan is to make that a pedestrian park and pedestrian mall

and knock that damn thing down. You used to, when I moved to Washington, for sure. Low these many years ago, almost 20 years now, which is shocking, but it was open. Yeah. You couldn't get a car through it,

but you could walk through it or bike through it. It was 9-11 that started turning it into a freaking compound. And that's the same with the Capitol as well. Yeah. I mean, have you ever read Edmund Morris's bio of Teddy Roosevelt? Mm-hmm. It's great.

Like, pedestrians on like an arboral day could just walk into the White House and, you know, get some cake. Oh, yeah. Or whatever, you know, but like Teddy's riding around shirtless on horseback shooting targets out of the trees. Back when America was great, truly great. He was.

He used to shoot all the grounds, riding horse around. So I will close things out here with, I wish I could name an entire complex, which would be the Lafanc Plaza complex, which is southwest of the capital, kind of south by southeast of the White House. On the other side of the National Mall, it is just this conglomeration of Pord Conquist. it is hideous. There are roads that go underneath and through buildings, and it doesn't make it look any worse than if the roads weren't there and the traffic and all that weren't there. I will say the U.S. Postal Service headquarters, which is there, which is in the Lafant Plaza

sort of complex, is the ugliest building. And if I had to pick one within the entire, I'd get rid of the entire complex entirely, but if I had to pick one, it would be that building. That is not to be. confused with the old post office pavilion, which is on the other side of the mall on Pennsylvania Avenue. And during the first Trump administration was actually a Trump-branded hotel, which raised all kinds of questions ethical and otherwise, and is now no longer a Trump-branded hotel. But that is actually a very pleasant and nice building. It is the Waldorf. It is now the Waldorf, correct. I actually was in 2016, about March 2016, I think, walking around with me and several other reporters with Donald Trump while he was campaigning for president and refurbishing the

ballroom in that building, which he had purchased. And I did, I will say, I came away with a greater appreciation from that sort of 30-minute tour. He does know what he's talking about when it comes to restoring buildings and ballrooms and such. So, you know, I did gain an appreciation for that aspect of his knowledge and expertise. So did you find his obsession with ballroom, ironic. Well, I'm going to leave that. there. Thank you, Kevin. I'm going to leave it. No comment on that. But thank you all for joining me today on The Dispatch Podcasts. Thank you all for listening. And we will talk to you all next time. If you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the

show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at roundtable at the dispatch.com. That's going to do it show, thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.